June 05, 2014

Color of the Week by Valori Wells

Smoke is a great neutral... I love mixing warm and cool together in prints as well as in quilts. You just can't have equal parts or they compete with each other. This is one of my favorite Blueprint fabrics because I have always loved Queen Anne's Lace. When I was young my Grandma Clara and I would go out and pick wild flowers to put in a flower press to dry and then make cards. The delicate Queen Anne's Lace was perfect for flower pressing. Such a happy childhood memory!

I've been using gray more in my quilts, instead of my usual beige. I didn't realize how many different shades of gray there are! I can't wait to go to Sisters in July and see all your fabrics in person (and of course buy lots)!

When I first started to quilt, I would regard a neutral fabric as a fabric that combines all the fabrics together harmoniously. However, I would always use white. Now, I have discovered that other colors such as beige, black, grey, pink, brown (insert your favorite color in this list) can be used as neutrals as well. It all depends on the project! It appears that there is a plethora of neutral fabric choices! Oh, boy, so much fabric, so little time!

Love the color of the week idea. Love neutrals, though they frequently get forgotten when shopping. Am about to embark on a quilt with neutrals and red (Freddie Moran would argue it is a quilt with neutrals!)

I'm still learning a lot about color selection in quilting. I'm very new, but I seem to love pretty much every color of the rainbow due to all the different hues in all the fabric lines. I love the smoke color too, it would be a great neutral but interesting at the same time. Thanks

I love your shades of smoke assortment. Neutrals leave so much room for quilt art craft. After several projects in my "to be finished" line, I have been thinking about low contrast quilts. Not 'whole cloth', but pieced in some manner and relying on the subtle color shifts to show the pattern. Then, add quilting, maybe echo style with some other textural enhancement and wow ... exciting. Now I need to search out the variety of a single neutral to do it in. Fun! Better sketch it out quick, right?